The waters along the shores of Atlantic Canada often looked like the rough waters just outside of Bogue Inlet that we saw in late summer of 2013. These waters beat us up enough that we stayed less than hour before looking for a calmer place to fish.

Of course waters often change from day to day, a couple of weeks prior to taking that shot I snapped this picture. The photo that I took on August 19 shows even a more dramatic difference. With the water being very calm we were able to enjoy our time out there a lot more than the day when the whipped up waters attacked us from all sides.

Perhaps my memory is not serving me well, but I remember very few times when the Bay of Fundy near our place in St. Croix Cove, Nova Scotia, was ever calm. Low tide seemed to be the only time when the water was almost at peace with itself.

Of course having a tide of twenty-eight feet might have something to do with those stirred up waters. There are other events that help me remember rough Canadian waters. I made several trips on the Bluenose Ferry that used to travel the waters between Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Bar Harbor, Maine.

As I recount in my book, A Taste For The Wild, Canada's Martimes, I can remember napping on one of the Bluenose's long sofas and seeing some of the heavy weighted ash trays slide by as we rocked and rolled in the water. Of course that was nothing like the trips by ferry to Newfoundland where they chained down each corner of your vehicle.

My last crossing to Prince Edward Island before they built the causeway was during a fierce winter storm that had waves breaking over the bow of the icebreaker that was hauling us to the island. The water was freezing as soon as it hit the steel hull.

The few years we lived high on a hill near Mount Saint Vincent University overlooking Halifax Harbor gave us a calmer view of the water. Still as is often the case, you remember those stormy days long after you might remember a normal day.

All of us that live near the water know that it can change quickly. Often a storm like Hurricane Irene can whip up even the waters of a calm little inlet like ours. We live just off the White Oak River not far from Swansboro, North Carolina, and we are pretty well protected. Of course during a hurricane the waves over at the ocean are pretty wild, but we often have a hard time seeing them since the big bridge to the barrier island is closed during storms. These pictures of some surfers during one of our storms are a good reminder of how stirred up our water can get.

Living by or near to the water is a great privilege, but it does come with some challenges as you can see from these Irene pictures. Being close to the water seems to magnify weather, but on the other hand we can get some great sunset pictures on the water. I also would not be able to enjoy fishing ten months out of the year if I did not live on the water here on the Southern Outer Banks.

The rough waters outside Bogue Inlet on one day will not keep us from going back there. I will enjoy the Canadian memories that they trigger and keep going back until we get to enjoy another one of those days when the water is bathtub calm.

There is one big difference in our waters from the Canadian waters that I remember and that happens to be temperature. The day we saw the rough waters we also recorded a water temperature in the ocean of seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit which is much higher than I ever remember seeing water in Canada. You can read more about that in this post.

If you want to plan a trip to sample some of our warm waters, check out our Emerald Isle Travel Guide. It is available either in Kindle format or paperback. Our waters also have some nice fish and people have been known to catch drum fever from fishing here.